Mentoring Data: Extracting Useful Information, Pie Graphs and Bar Graphs

About two weeks ago I had a meeting with Richard Genzer. He recommended I transform the mentoring timelines into pie graphs and correlate them to the post-mentoring session follow-up I've been doing with the entrepreneurs. Once I've collected data, this type of correlation could allow me to come up with a theoretical breakdown of an optimal mentoring conversation. Also, by simplifying the data into pie graphs allows for quicker communication at a lower resolution, and will hopefully become easier to notice patterns.

The following series of images shows the transformation of the timeline into a pie graph and a bar graph. The first image is a legend that gives a greater description of the various conversational themes.

Legend

Mentoring Session 1

Mentoring Session 2

Mentoring Session 3

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Mentoring Conversations Visualized: More Data, New Discoveries

Two more mentoring sessions recorded, analyzed, and visualized! The first infographic is a conversation between an idea stage entrepreneur and a mentor. It's also a first time meeting between this particular mentor and entrepreneur. The second infographic is a conversation between an entrepreneur that's built a prototype and a mentor. The entrepreneur and mentor depicted conversing in the second infographic have been meeting for several months now and have an established relationship.

Idea Stage Entrepreneur

Prototype Stage Entrepreneur

When comparing these two conversations with the first mentoring conversation I visualized, which was a first time meeting between an idea stage entrepreneur and mentor, the similarities are mostly in how the conversations begin. The entrepreneur has to bring the mentor up to speed about what he or she has been doing for the past month or so before the mentor can provide any strategic advice. This part of the conversation is highlighted in burgundy. Furthermore, another similarity is the total amount of time taken up by current/past strategy. It takes a significant portion of the mentoring session to bring the mentor up to speed on what the entrepreneur has been doing and is currently doing. I do not yet know if it's good or bad that it takes somewhere between 10 - 15 minutes to discuss current/past strategies.

One noticeable difference between these two mentoring sessions and the first mentoring session is the amount of questions asked by the mentor from the first mentoring conversation. I think the difference in the amount of questions asked has to do with the mentoring/advising style of the mentor.

The part I'm still struggling to figure out is how to measure an effective mentoring/advising conversation. Looking at the infographics, I'm not yet sure I can see or point to markers that comprise an effective mentoring conversation.

Even if I can't figure out how to measure an effective mentoring/advising conversation, implementing a prototype will show one of three things: positive deviation from the norm, no deviation from the norm, or negative deviation from the norm. A positive deviation will be when a prototype aids in facilitating knowledge transfer. No deviation will be when the prototype did just as well as there being no prototype implemented into the conversation. Negative deviation is when the prototype hinders knowledge transfer from mentor to entrepreneur. In other words, designing a prototype for these conversations will either lead to something good, something bad, or absolutely nothing...

You can see one possible prototype here, or another prototype here.

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Thesis Committee Presentation: Mentoring System

My presentation to my thesis committee went well this past Wednesday. The final pieces of research and prototype implementations that need to occur are only a few months away. Two major steps that need to be taken is to collect ten to twenty more recordings of mentoring conversations and visualize them. The purpose is to create a baseline measurement before implementing the request for mentoring form. Creating a baseline will let me measure whether the request for mentoring form is effective or ineffective at enabling knowledge and experience transfer from mentor to entrepreneur. An example of one such conversation visual is shown below:

A few minor steps that need to be taken includes fleshing out the design for the different pieces of the mentoring system. I used prezi to present a poster of the mentoring system to my thesis committee, which you can interact with below. The only piece from the mentoring system that's reached a state for implementation is the request for mentoring form. The other pieces that need to be designed include the business readiness intake, the match-making system, the follow-up form, and the mentor sign-up form.

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Serendipity, Trust, and Identification: Three Areas that Greatly Influence Mentor-Entrepreneur Interactions

Imagine yourself at a networking event, and you’re looking for a person with an expertise in retail marketing in this crowd of people to mentor you and provide advice about what retailers your business should partner with. Instead, you get stuck talking to the lawyer for thirty minutes, and completely miss the person you should of been talking to on the other side of the room.

From my research, I've learned that finding the right business mentor is a three-pronged problem: it's rooted in serendipity, trust, and identification.

From interviews, I learned that serendipity means two things to the entrepreneurial community, a missed connection and how relationships form. The example of the networking event I had you imagine two paragraphs earlier - the entrepreneur getting stuck in a conversation with the lawyer - that's an example of a missed connection. In an interview with a local mentor explaining how he's met and formed relationships with young entrepreneurs, he said, "... most of it is very serendipitous ... that's how real relationships form. It's pretty hard to find your soul mate at a speed-dating session. Mentorship is a highly personal experience."

Trust is the second pillar governing mentor-entrepreneur interactions. In an interview with a local angel investor and organizer of community tech startup events, he recounted his experiences of organizing exclusive groups and meetings. He argued that the people in the group, even if they don't know each other, trust each other because it's exclusive to the degree that the people within the group know each others value. After my interviewee pointed this out, I began noticing it with the groups people all are a part of - i.e. universities, incubators and accelerators, etc. I think this is why an introduction from a friend proves to be effective.

Learning about trust as one of the underpinnings governing the interactions and meetings of entrepreneurs and mentors makes sense because it lowers the transaction cost on the exchange of information. The Rainforest by Hwang and Horowitt argue that the amount of distrust increases the transaction cost between people that want to exchange ideas, labor, and capital - the life and blood of any startup ecosystem. If there's a higher distrust in a startup ecosystem, then there are fewer transactions occurring between the various denizens of that ecosystem. In other words, people are not willing to seek a return on involvement, because there's a certain amount of risk associated with each transaction. If the risk is too high, and there isn't enough trust to make up for that risk, then the transaction will not occur. For example, an engineer and a business person, both with a similar idea for a product, will be unlikely to work together for a period of time because they do not trust each other.

Identification is simply the mentor identifying the entrepreneur, and the entrepreneur identifying the mentor. I've learned that it's normal for entrepreneurs to seek several strategic experts to advise on various areas of weakness. One entrepreneur summed it up quite well, "I tend to look for weaknesses of core competencies of specific aspects of the business model in the team." This means, a startup may feel comfortable with their product development, but needs advice on customer acquisition or on financial projections. So the entrepreneur will seek out a person who's an expert in customer acquisition or financial projections. This means that the entrepreneur identifies the right business mentor based upon their area of expertise.

The second part, the mentor identifying the entrepreneur has been a bit trickier to find a consistent answer across from mentors. It's also the part I've found to be new and intriguing, because the mentor is looking for an entrepreneur that is coachable. The question now posed is, how does one know if an entrepreneur is coachable? Two of the mentors I had interviewed and observed said they identify a teachable entrepreneur by the questions they ask. I imagine a solution to the problem of coachability will allow for non-mentors hoping to bring entrepreneurs and mentors together, to be able to screen for coachability. This is a vital part to understand if a mentoring system is to be designed.

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The Opportunity for Design to Add Value

The opportunity for design to add value exists in designing a system that will help mentors and entrepreneurs to identify each other. This opportunity was discovered at the intersection of mentoring relationships, mentoring sessions, networking events, and tech startups. Connecting these different areas creates the opportunity to enhance entrepreneurial learning by designing a filtering and matching system bringing the right entrepreneurs and mentors together. 

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